I am a Titans fan so I have watched many games he's played, including every game last season and 2010 through Direct TV as I do not live near Nashville. Let me tell you something about Chris Johnson. He is not a good football player, let alone a good running back. He has terrible awareness for the game, has poor vision, does not follow his blocks, and in general was one of the main reasons, if not the main reason that the Titans have struggled so much since 2009. He is a lousy blocker and has hands of stone. He is the worst breaker of tackles that I have ever seen. Literally. His one strength is that if you give him a big hole he can run through it for long gains. And that may happen 2-3 times a season (see Jets-Titans 2012). I know most of you dislike Shonn Greene. When Greene was in the game last year the Titans were a far more efficient and overall better offense. In 2012 the Titans played a game against the Colts. Both Johnson and Javon Ringer got 14 touches. Ringer racked up pretty much double what Johnson got and when Ringer was in the game you could see how much more efficient the Titans were. When I think about Chris Johnson's time with the Titans the one play that will always stick out in my mind was a game in 2011 against New Orleans. The Titans were fighting the Jets among other teams for the final AFC Wild card spot. The Titans had a 2nd and 10. Johnson picked up 9 yards on a screen pass and had a defender one on one. All he had to do was either run out of bounds for an extra 2 yards, cut to the other side of the field for an extra 4-5 yards, but instead ran straight into him, tried to spin off of him, got tackled and didn't get the 1st. The Titans failed on 3rd and 4th and 1, lost the game by 5 points and missed the playoffs in a tie-breaker with Cincinnati. If you look at Pro Football Outsiders ranks of RB's he ranked 30th of 46 running backs in terms of efficiency in 2010, 49th out of 51 running backs in 2011, 33rd out of 42 running backs in 2012 and 17 out of 47 running backs in 2013. I am well aware of the fact that Johnson has had 1,000 yards every year that he's played. That's mostly a result of getting force fed the ball, particularly over the past three seasons. Maybe he'll all of the sudden learn to follow his blockers, how to pick up a blitz, how to run a route other than standing around waiting for the ball, and be able to actually break a tackle. Who knows. But if the Chris Johnson that I saw from 2010 until now is what you're getting then you're going to be mightily disappointed. Here's a picture of a run that Johnson had against the Colts. He got two yards on this run. Any competent running back should have had at least 10:
Rather then showing a snapshot image on pause, why dont you get us the whole play so we can see what happened?
regardless of your analysis, i don't understand how you can justify any RB as bad after he had a 2,000 yard season
2009 was a long time ago. And Johnson was force fed the ball that year to get him the 2000 yards. I'm certainly not taking anything away from him. It was a great season. But he's clearly not the same guy now as he was then.
That post definitely seemed to have some rooted sour grapes, but thanks for trying to give an accurate report on him. I don't know much about Tennessee's offense but how much did they have Johnson catching the ball out of the backfield? The Jets will be doing that a lot, and trying to get him looks in the open field where he can go for the HR.
and he still averaged 5.6 YPC basically facing 8-men fronts. also i'm not sure you can say he has bad hands, he averages like 40 receptions a year, that's pretty good
So Ivory essentially split carries with Powell last year over the course of the season, and yielded 3rd downs to Powell, yet he is a work horse? Ivory is not a guy you want to give 20+ carries a game. He's not a work horse, and always has nagging injuries. He's most effective at gaining the tough yds, and is very capable of another 5.0 ypc season, but not with a very high amount of carries. I expect that rushing load to be fairly split, with a slight edge to Johnson. but i agree with you that Johnson is here to upgrade Powell. 3rd downs, short passing game, carries, etc, which Powell saw a ton of action with last year.. That will all add up to more snaps and touches (which isn't just rushing) than Ivory. In terms of 'ticking clock' i don't hear many people saying that about AP or Forte, etc.. He's got at least 1 good season left, and i think 2.
I hear you... it's something that will be worth watching early in the season. I don't know if Wilfork and/or Mayo will bounce back to what they were before their injuries (Mayo should be OK, but Wilfork is a 30+, 300+ pound guy coming off an Achilles) but there are a lot of good backs in the AFC East now. Jets have the nice Ivory/CJ combo, Miami picked up Moreno, Bills have Spiller and Jackson... got to do at least a passable job defending the run to win the division.
In all honesty not what I wanted to hear (I'd rather you said "great move he'll help your team I wish we'd re-signed him" ) but interesting take on CJ. My immediate feelings about him are like you say: home run ability. He can take it to the house. And he will not be overused in the Jets offense. But if what you say is true and as a Titans fan who has watched all of their games (the same way we do with the Jets). And the team is better without him than with him I only hope he can in a specific role with the Jets not add to our offensive woes. If he does (I'm not sure how much of that 8 million is guaranteed) then I assume he won't play very much since we have Bilal and Ivory. As for Greene I liked him. He's a good player. But beat up after a lot of usage as the main Jets Rb. These guys don't last that long. quote="TNTitansFan, post: 2982523, member: 20644"]I am a Titans fan so I have watched many games he's played, including every game last season and 2010 through Direct TV as I do not live near Nashville. Let me tell you something about Chris Johnson. He is not a good football player, let alone a good running back. He has terrible awareness for the game, has poor vision, does not follow his blocks, and in general was one of the main reasons, if not the main reason that the Titans have struggled so much since 2009. He is a lousy blocker and has hands of stone. He is the worst breaker of tackles that I have ever seen. Literally. His one strength is that if you give him a big hole he can run through it for long gains. And that may happen 2-3 times a season (see Jets-Titans 2012). I know most of you dislike Shonn Greene. When Greene was in the game last year the Titans were a far more efficient and overall better offense. In 2012 the Titans played a game against the Colts. Both Johnson and Javon Ringer got 14 touches. Ringer racked up pretty much double what Johnson got and when Ringer was in the game you could see how much more efficient the Titans were. When I think about Chris Johnson's time with the Titans the one play that will always stick out in my mind was a game in 2011 against New Orleans. The Titans were fighting the Jets among other teams for the final AFC Wild card spot. The Titans had a 2nd and 10. Johnson picked up 9 yards on a screen pass and had a defender one on one. All he had to do was either run out of bounds for an extra 2 yards, cut to the other side of the field for an extra 4-5 yards, but instead ran straight into him, tried to spin off of him, got tackled and didn't get the 1st. The Titans failed on 3rd and 4th and 1, lost the game by 5 points and missed the playoffs in a tie-breaker with Cincinnati. If you look at Pro Football Outsiders ranks of RB's he ranked 30th of 46 running backs in terms of efficiency in 2010, 49th out of 51 running backs in 2011, 33rd out of 42 running backs in 2012 and 17 out of 47 running backs in 2013. I am well aware of the fact that Johnson has had 1,000 yards every year that he's played. That's mostly a result of getting force fed the ball, particularly over the past three seasons. Maybe he'll all of the sudden learn to follow his blockers, how to pick up a blitz, how to run a route other than standing around waiting for the ball, and be able to actually break a tackle. Who knows. But if the Chris Johnson that I saw from 2010 until now is what you're getting then you're going to be mightily disappointed. Here's a picture of a run that Johnson had against the Colts. He got two yards on this run. Any competent running back should have had at least 10: [/quote]
Last year it was obvious that Powell got worse as the season went on. Luckily Ivory was well rested and took up the slack. I would argue Ivory was the offense's MVP last year. Powell's decline concerns me. It was somewhat masked by Ivory's contributions. I don't know the reason why Powell declined, as he looked very good early on. In any event I expect Ivory to be used pretty much as last year, and agree with others that Johnson will in effect take over Powell's role, and an enhanced one at that, while Powell probably is kept as insurance.
Fastest 40 Yard Dash Times in NFL History Chris Johnson2008RB4.24 Dri Archer2014RB4.26 Marquise Goodwin2013WR4.27 Jerome Mathis2005WR4.28 Jacoby Ford2010WR4.28 http://www.statisticbrain.com/fastest-40-yard-dash-times-in-nfl-history/
While that may ultimately turn out to be the case, the money CJ is being paid very clearly indicates that the FO is expecting substantially more production than a situational RB with limited touches would likely provide. My guess is that Morhinweg et al intend to utilize CJ and Vick in the same way that he did with Brian Westbrook and McNabb which, back in 2006-2007, was an extremely productive combination. Whether Johnson has the appropriate or sufficiently translatable skills to enable it to generate similar results naturally remains to be seen but on paper, at least, the prospects are exciting.
this is actually a very good point. If teams feel they need to respect him enough to pack it in (8-men fronts etc.) that should open things up for others. Couple that with either Vick or Geno (assuming he runs more often) and it can make life easier for a lot of other players. Will be interesting to see how well he's utilized
MM had Vick and McCoy in Philly, now he will have Vick and Johnson here..I would bet he has some pretty solid plans on how he will use them.
He was doing that this season. Everyone knew that Johnson would probably be cut at the end of the season.
